


i'll drag you with me (but reach past death to catch you)

by CloudySonder



Series: Lost and Found [1]
Category: All For The Game - Nora Sakavic
Genre: Angst, Badass Renee Walker, Betaed, Fluff, Fluff and Angst, Found Family, Grief, Happy Foxes, M/M, Neil Josten loves Andrew Minyard, Parental David Wymack, Soft Neil Josten, lowkey Badass Betsy Dobson, support network
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-07
Updated: 2020-06-07
Packaged: 2021-03-03 21:42:05
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,301
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24582502
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CloudySonder/pseuds/CloudySonder
Summary: He’d remember the soft feeling of threading Andrew’s blonde locks through his fingers, a thumb brushing over his cheek when Andrew let him. His hands would remember the warm feeling of Andrew’s pressing into his, as he gave him a home and a promise.These hands of his wouldn’t be able to catch Andrew after Neil died, too mangled and bloody and unrecognizable to do much for anyone. He hoped, desperately, as he held the unspoken promises in his hands, Wymack’s permanence and Renee’s “People can be fixed” and Dr. Dobson’s “Yes” and the way Aaron looked at Andrew when he thought he wasn’t looking, and hoped that Andrew would be caught by them, saved from drowning into the abyss....Neil is oblivious, but not *that* oblivious, and strings together a support net to catch Andrew after his death.
Relationships: Neil Josten/Andrew Minyard
Series: Lost and Found [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1777639
Comments: 19
Kudos: 181





	i'll drag you with me (but reach past death to catch you)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [crazy_like_a](https://archiveofourown.org/users/crazy_like_a/gifts), [inTheLight](https://archiveofourown.org/users/inTheLight/gifts).



> betaed by the lovely InTheLight!

The night that Neil Josten decided to trade his life to take down the Moriyamas, Neil couldn’t find the will to grieve himself yet, his voice tired and startlingly vulnerable as he turned to Kevin. 

“Will you still teach me?”

“Every night,” Kevin replied, and Neil saw resolve, different from his but strong nonetheless, reflected back to him. 

Neil wondered if he deserved it.

The night that Neil Josten decided to stop running, he couldn’t sleep. He was acutely aware of the hours ticking by, staring at the numbers on his phone as they changed and running his fingertips over the ridges of his keys until he’d memorized them. After 3 AM, the phone went warm on his palm before dying, and he removed his grip from the keys to find his fingers covered in angry red indents and smelling strongly of iron.

He turned to lay on his back, the artificial warmth from the phone making it feel heavier in his left hand and his thumb tracing the shape of the keys he’d memorized into his right. 

A phone, filled with constant texts and people to call.

A key ring, filled with constant reminders of home, as Neil had learned to call the jagged pieces: the keys to the house in Columbia, the court keys, Andrew’s car key.

A phone. Some keys. The warm feeling he had in both hands.

Neil Josten would stay for them. 

And, as Neil’s resolve hardened, he realized Nathaniel Wesninski wouldn’t. 

Nathaniel Wesninski was a desperate will to survive in human form, who’d never stop running, not just because his father would kill him, but because he’d kill himself. He’d known since the day he’d burned his mother’s corpse at the beach, the acrid smoke permeating every pore on his body as the ocean lapped at the shore, uncaring. 

He hadn’t cried. He hadn’t thought about their good memories, hadn’t wistfully reminisced about better times and soft words and loving touches, because there weren’t any. 

His mother was hard edges and harder blows, falling on him more often than their enemies, but she’d kept him alive. Kept him panicked and fearful, sure, but  _ focused _ . Focused on running, focused only on the next step instead of the cliff he was running off of, or the opportunities for self-harm and worse he’d left behind him.

_ But _ , Nathaniel thought as he watched the smoke and the ashes drift off into the air,  _ she was gone _ .

On the night he burned his mother’s corpse, Nathaniel Wesninski didn’t cry. Instead, he crumpled into a heap beside his mother’s ashes, and he wished, like he’d never dared to wish for anything before, to die. 

It was a wonder how the thought hadn’t occurred to him before, if only because of how much he focused on running, but that night, as the full moon bathed the ocean’s waves in gorgeous ripples of almost-blue light, Nathaniel Wesninski realized he wanted to stop.

_ This is what you wanted _ , Neil whispered silently to Nathaniel Wesninski, who he couldn’t bring himself to believe was himself at the moment.  _ I’m stopping _ .

He didn’t feel the relief or the calm wash over him as he’d expected. Instead, there were only the tendrils of longing and grief over losing teammates he was no more than a few feet away from, wrapping around his throat so tightly he couldn’t breathe.

He realized with a start that it was because he was Neil Josten. 

Nathaniel Wesninski may have wanted to stop, but Neil Josten wanted to stay. 

Neil Josten, broken and fucked-up as he was, wanted to stay with these people, almost as broken as he was, so badly that it scared him.

The realization burrowed itself deep into his head, a precious thought alongside his memories of the Foxes, and he let his head run through the past months, enjoying memories of raucous laughter with the team in the day and quietly offered truths in the night, holding each memory in his arms like spun gold until he fell into a blessedly dreamless sleep.

…

The Longhorns were an excellent team, with players just tall enough to be deadly and just small enough to be quick to score. The Foxes, against all odds, snatched the win away from them, ending the game at 7-6, Foxes’ favor. 

When the final buzzer sounded, the Foxes had jumped on each other, a heap of joy and relief and excitement, screaming and hugging each other tight with the occasional almost-coherent compliment. The upperclassmen had managed to drag an exhausted but proud Kevin and an annoyed but too tired to resist Aaron into their pile, leaving only Andrew, who’d never let people touch him, and Neil, who purposely tempered his excitement and stepped away, out of their ring of excitement.

Neil staggered against the wall, feeling as if his muscles had dissolved into his blood, and allowed himself a moment of silence. He could count the games he had left to play down on his fingers, and they seemed to be slipping out of his hands every time he blinked. Exy was his lifeforce, the one constant he’d let himself keep, the strand that connected Nathaniel Wesninski and Neil Josten. 

He should’ve been happy enough celebrating from the sidelines, over his shots that made it, his passes that were caught perfectly. Instead, he caught himself staring at his pile of teammates, who wore smiles too wide for their face, whooping and hugging and punching each other. Neil didn’t know if he’d ever let himself smile like that.

The brief reminder of his father was shoved to the side, and Neil stared at the Foxes he’d come to know individually, as people, culminations of struggles and successes and failures that he’d come to cherish. 

Dan and Allison were fighters, staunchly solid in their beliefs and opinions, and strong sturdy pillars, who he’d learned to rely on when his scars ached and his past knocked.

He felt quietly guilty for making Allison lose another person she had tried to protect. Dan and Allison were quiet sufferers, who’d bury the pain under heavy cobblestones and stand strong in front of others, but they’d crumple when they were alone. 

Neil didn’t see why he was worth crumpling for, but he wasn’t dumb enough to forget the way Dan had stood beside him, had hugged him protectively, as if he was worth protecting, and Allison had painted him together after Christmas with the Ravens, teaching him how to act as if everything was normal, because despite it all, Allison knew that “fake it ‘till you make it” worked. 

Matt and Nicky would cry, profusely, once it was all over. Neil pondered it as he leaned against his racquet for support. 

Matt would have lost both his roommates this year. Nicky would have lost family. They’d both taken care of him, offered him gentleness and simple joys in the forms of jokes and comforts. He hadn’t forgotten the way Matt would’ve dropped everything to pick him up from Columbia, hadn’t forgotten the way Nicky had texted him constantly the moment he got a new phone, just so Neil would stop flinching whenever it rang.

In return, all he could offer them was another tick on their already difficult lives, a weight that they’d carry for the rest of their lives. 

He silently apologized, for he hadn’t realized when his life, so unmistakably useless to him, became so meaningful to others. 

He traced the court keys into the palm of his hand, looping his fingers through the strings of his racquet as he looked upon his teammates, who seemed so far away now, all quiet strength through trying times, who’d stood their ground then, and would stand it long after he was gone. He watched them celebrate a win they’d worked harder than anyone to learn they deserved, and he let a faint wisp of wistful pride flit across his features.

A soft touch on his shoulder snapped Neil out of his thoughts.

“You’re too young to be looking at them like that,” A gruff voice spoke up beside him. Neil’s gaze flitted to Wymack briefly, before resting back on his giddy pile of teammates.

“Like what?” Neil meant for it to sound annoyed, but instead, he just seemed tired.

“Like you’re proud from the sidelines,” Wymack replied, and he squeezed Neil’s shoulder, though his voice betrayed nothing but his usual rough lilt. “Like you’re someone looking at a nice picture or something.”

Neil didn’t flinch away from the touch, too busy rolling Wymack’s words through his head. One of the traits that made Wymack so easy to trust, he supposed, was his honesty, clear-cut lighthouse beams in the stormy seas the Foxes had learned to accept as life. 

Wymack spoke solely in truths, in facts, in solutions rather than empty comforts. Neil wondered what his solution would be when Neil died. His throat went dry. He wanted to ask, if only to fill up the silence, but instead, what came out was a quiet, “I  _ am  _ proud of them.”

Wymack sighed, but it came out more exasperated than actually upset. 

“Not ‘them’, kid. ‘ _ Us’. _ ”

Neil blinked at him.

“You’re a Fox, Josten. Keep forgetting and I’ll schedule you for a dementia test with Abby,” Wymack grunted, before walking towards the locker room with the rest of the team.

Neil huffed out a small snort at the threat, feeling some of the tension seep out of his shoulders. Despite it all, the Wesninskis, the Moriyamas, the ugly reminders carved into his body, Neil Josten, no longer Nathaniel Wesninski, was a Fox. He’d live as a Fox, and die as a Fox, and Neil believed that would be enough for him.

As he started his trek to the locker rooms, he noticed Andrew start to push himself away from the support of the goalpost to follow. He realized belatedly that Andrew was waiting for him, and it made an unfamiliar warmth spread through his chest.

He tried to smother it as soon as he remembered that Andrew was just upholding his side of the deal, now that Neil had painted a target on his back.

Even so, the embers seemed to crackle merrily in his chest on the bus ride home, as he studied Andrew’s profile while he dozed, trying to memorize his face. He remembered Andrew letting Neil’s broken frame lean on him the day he was released from Easthaven, and Andrew listening to his past, a steadiness to his frame and a gleam of understanding in his eyes.

Neil was struck by the realization that he’d miss Andrew.

The selfish wish to stay, stay next to Andrew’s unrelenting protection, holding his keys and his phone, crawled up his neck and sent a shiver down his spine.

Neil wondered, briefly, if Andrew would miss him.

He’d remember him, surely. Andrew never forgot anyone, which was perhaps one of the most damning traits he’d ever seen. Neil knew Andrew wouldn’t regret anything since Andrew never believed in regret, but thought, selfishly, that it’d be nice if he’d think about Neil once in a while after he was gone.

…

The night Andrew kissed him for the first time, Neil stumbled back into his dorm, sparks of excitement buzzing under his skin and memories of lips pressed against his buzzing through his mind. As he passed the bathroom mirror, he found a dopey smile tugging at his lips, and flickers of giddiness dancing through his blue eyes. 

He’d been smiling, without realizing, and as he blinked at his reflection again, he realized he looked nothing like his father. 

Auburn hair. Blue eyes. A smile.

But somehow, the face looking back at him was distinctly Neil Josten.

_ Neil Josten who’d just been kissed by Andrew Minyard,  _ his mind supplied him, and he saw his face flush.

He climbed into his bed, his thoughts still buzzing, as the night replayed itself over and over and over before Neil fell asleep, Andrew’s keys in his right hand, his phone in his left, his words in his ears, and his lips on Neil’s.

For an evening and a night, Neil let himself forget.

…

Neil let himself indulge in the delusion that Andrew didn’t care about him. He let himself believe that “this” was safe to experiment with, because Andrew didn’t regret, and he wouldn’t miss Neil when he died, even as memories of whispered secrets lingering in wisps of cigarette smoke nudged him awake. 

Neil knew, if he let himself, that it was something more. He recalled the honesty he’d catch in Andrew’s expression some nights, the little “yes”s that Andrew gave to Neil both in and out of the court, and the way Andrew would instantly pull back the second Neil showed even the slightest hint of reluctance.

Neil couldn’t imagine Andrew giving anyone else as much as he’d offered Neil. He knew that Andrew would remember moments like these with picture-perfect clarity, Andrew propped up on the beanbag chair, trying but failing to look nonchalant as Neil’s gaze dropped to his lips.

“Yes or no?” Neil whispered, and he was close enough that he knew Andrew could feel the warm puffs of air from his question. Andrew gave a nearly imperceptible nod, and Neil did the cruelest thing he could do: he leaned in.

…

Neil had been sitting on the bleachers after practice, strangely lethargic as he watched Matt and Kevin run practice shots on goal, half of which Andrew batted away, simply because stepping to the side was more effort. 

Andrew’s stoic glance fell on him more than once when he thought Neil wasn’t paying attention, and Neil’s will to keep himself in denial wore thin. Without his consent, his mind raced to memories of the first time he’d kissed Neil, a brief but memorable clashing of lips that Andrew cut short, and Neil hadn’t known what he’d looked like then, but he’d burned Andrew’s face that night into his head. 

He remembered searching hazel eyes scanning his frame, looking for something he wasn’t sure how to give, remembered how Andrew’s resolve hardened as he pulled himself farther away, remembered “This isn’t yes,” remembered “I won’t be like them” and “I won’t let you let me be.” 

He  _ knew,  _ knew better than anyone the shape of Andrew’s thoughts and the way they were tangled in convoluted knots, but also knew how they’d wrapped around Neil, shielding him softly from everything, even Andrew himself.

Neil swallowed, and he couldn’t help himself from wondering what would happen to those thoughts when he died. He imagined their frayed, messy ends after his disappearance guillotined the thoughts so carefully wrapped around him, the stumps that Andrew would carry around forever, whether he wanted to or not, an eidetic memory taunting him with it on empty nights on the roof between unstolen cigarettes.

He thought about how he selfishly let “pipe dream” become reality before being snatched away. He should’ve let Andrew wake up, instead of dooming him to plunge further into a perpetual nightmare after he’d left. Instead, he leaned in, somehow convincing both Andrew and himself that they deserved each other, a cruel torture even his father would never be capable of. 

After he died, Andrew wouldn’t cry. Neil wished that he would, instead of burying his memories of them somewhere much deeper than “six feet under,” double-barricading his walls, and tripling his self-destructive outlets: alcohol, cracker dust, violence. 

He flinched when Renee put a gentle hand over his own.

“How are you?” She asked, in lieu of a hello.

He lifted his head to look at her, opening his mouth to mutter “I’m fine,” before he made eye contact with Renee and his thoughts fell out instead.

“I’m going to kill someone,” Neil answered, and he nearly trembled from the truth of it. He hoped Renee couldn’t hear how small he sounded, how the sentence came out in a scared wisp of breath rather than voice.

Renee hummed in response, an unbreakable calm.

“How?” She asked after a moment. Neil stilled at the unexpected response, before realizing that Renee had probably had this exact conversation before, word for word, with Andrew. He huffed out a small breath of air before taking a deep breath and running his hands down his face.

He looked at the ground between his knees, his head in his hands.

“In all the ways that matter,” He whispered. Neil saw Renee nod as if she knew exactly what Neil meant, even if Neil knew she didn’t. She couldn’t possibly know that Neil was going to die, and he’d take a part of Andrew with him, even if he didn’t want to. She couldn’t know that Andrew would isolate himself to avoid another pipe dream and dive into a sea of self-destruction, and Neil wouldn’t be there to tug him back.

Renee didn’t  _ know _ , but she nodded like she  _ understood.  _ Neil felt something in him settle as he realized he’d chosen to believe her. She sat down carefully on the bleachers beside Neil, a measured distance away. 

Neil raised an eyebrow at her, yet still she sat, unflinching and steady.

“Are you okay with sitting next to a killer?” Neil asked, and the label sat heavily on his tongue.

“I could ask you the same thing,” Renee replied, and Neil almost smiled.

Some days, the Foxes forgot that Renee was once a raging fire, mind sharp as the edges of her blade, fighting a life that seemed too strong and ill-fitting for a small-framed girl like her. Neil didn’t understand how they forgot.

Her strength seemed evident in her every movement, a furnace of fortitude condensed into a small body. Her past was reflected in her calm words, in eyes that seemed much older than they were, that have seen things the rest of them couldn’t imagine. 

Nathaniel Wesninski admired her, for she fought where he ran, and she stopped when he couldn’t. Neil Josten was proud to call her family, and he was confident that she’d survive long after he disappeared. 

Neil let the buzz of contentment muffle his thoughts for a moment, as he waited for Renee to continue. She had offered a truth, and now the spinner fell on Neil.

“Will you be cruel?” Renee ran her thumb over her cross necklace, though her face was as serene as always. 

Neil let the question permeate him, looking for the shreds of truth under thick layers of deception. He chewed on his lip.

He looked towards Andrew, who gave him an impassive cursory glance before turning away, and Neil dreaded the way his heart bloomed in his chest. He broke his gaze, swallowed down the lump of guilt in his throat, and turned towards Renee, his face open and honest.

“I think I already have,” Neil answered, offering the only shred of truth he could with a shaky smile. Renee didn’t say a word as Neil dragged in a trembling breath and determinedly staved off the start of a panic attack. “I think I’m going to break them.”

Renee paused, clutching her cross as she contemplated.

“People can be fixed,” She said softly. From anyone else, they would sound like empty, ignorant words of comfort, but from Renee, it sounded like a promise. 

Neil watched silently as Renee got up from the bleachers to follow the other girls into the locker room. 

“People can be fixed,” He whispered to himself.

…

The living room was pristine. Mild, unoffensive paintings of trees and fruit and nature littered the walls, and the sofa was perfectly symmetrical, a blue pillow leaning against both arms. It was clean, yet cozy, and objectively calming.

Neil sat on the comfortable couch feeling the opposite. He’d asked Wymack for the appointment, and he’d given it to him immediately, albeit with a heaping dose of suspicion. 

“So,” Dr. Dobson placed a steaming mug of hot cocoa in front of him, and Neil glared at it as if it’d personally wronged him. “I heard your Foxes won the past three games. That’s wonderful! Anything you think you’ve done differently?”

“I’m not here to talk about Exy,” Neil gritted out. He hated Dr. Dobson’s living room for all the same reasons he hated hospital rooms; the static professionalism, the clinical meticulousness with which everything was placed. 

He looked at Dr. Dobson, Wymack’s “Betsy,” Andrew’s “Bee,” and only saw another doctor, running through a list of scripted questions, ready to piece him apart.

Dr. Dobson only nodded at Neil, waiting for him to continue with the same calm smile on her face.

“Can you fix Aaron and Andrew?” Neil felt a vague sort of relief at seeing Dr. Dobson genuinely surprised, proof of humanity behind the clinical smile. He watched as it shifted to a strange sort of satisfaction before she replied.

“I can certainly try.”

“I need a yes or a no. Can you fix them?” Neil asked impatiently. Andrew needed something, or someone, to protect and hold onto lest he forgot how, after Neil slipped from his grip. 

“Yes,” Dr. Dobson replied, resolutely, and the promise relaxed Neil. Neil looked at Dr. Dobson, who seemed satisfied with the question and didn’t want to push any further.

“Aren’t you going to ask why?”

“Not unless you want me to,” She replied, taking a sip from her hot cocoa. Neil took it for the respect it was and paused.

“Ok.”

“Would you like to ask me any questions?” Dr. Dobson asked. Neil couldn’t understand how this could help anyone–the questions, the calmness, the mask of professionalism– but Andrew did. 

He remembered the way Andrew had never skipped an appointment, how he’d come back looking more in control than before, how Andrew had included Dr. Dobson on the list of people he’d save. He remembered phone calls and his genuine laughter at her Halloween costume.

Neil swallowed down a knot of apprehension.

“Will you stay with Andrew?” Neil’s question came out quieter than he’d expected, but Dr. Dobson heard regardless.

“For as long as I am able.” For a brief moment, Neil caught a flicker of determination in her features, and he found himself trusting her despite himself. Neil didn’t understand Dr. Dobson, her warm but distanced demeanor, her controlled words, but he understood Andrew, and she did as well. 

“That’s all I wanted. Thanks,” Neil said, pushing himself off of the couch and heading for the door.

“Are you running?” Dr. Dobson asked.

Neil stiffened, his hand hovering over the doorknob. He looked back at her, surprised to find a flame in the eyes that seemed to see right through him, and for a moment, recognized the woman that managed to survive Andrew trying to break her and earned his respect.

Neil floundered for a lie, but the answers fell through his fingers like sand, drying his throat. He gave her an unintentional half-truth in his silence.

“It’s allowed, you know,” Dr. Dobson continued, the flame flickering out to be replaced by her usual warmth. “To expect people to choose you. To expect people to stay. To hope.”

Neil ignored her, against the crushing, suffocating feeling that threatened to bloom in his chest, and left the room.

...

That night, Neil traced the jagged outlines to his keys to the Columbia house into his hand. He thought about how his father would kill him.

It wouldn’t be quick. It wouldn’t be merciful. 

Neil would suffer; he’d scream, no matter how hard he bit his tongue, but he decided, at that moment, that he would never beg. He took a page from Andrew’s book and decided not to regret.

He pressed the outline harder into his palm as he imagined his father dislocating, breaking, and amputating his fingers with a rusty knife. He shoved nausea and fear to the back of his mind as he stared at his hands. 

Nathaniel Wesninski had nimble fingers and a steady grip. He could pick locks, take apart a gun, and handle a knife. He’d survived because of his hands, which held nothing but the handle of his own duffle-bag, packed only with essentials.

Neil Josten had learned to hold on. He’d learned how to hold things, to cradle them in between his palms instead of letting them go. He counted them off on his fingers, one by one.

Nicky and Matt. Family. 

Dan and Allison. Strength.

Renee. Fortitude.

Aaron and Kevin. The will to protect.

Andrew. Home. 

He’d remember the soft feeling of threading Andrew’s blonde locks through his fingers, a thumb brushing over his cheek when Andrew let him. His hands would remember the warm feeling of Andrew’s pressing into his, as he gave him a home and a promise.

These hands of his wouldn’t be able to catch Andrew after Neil died, too mangled and bloody and unrecognizable to do much for anyone. He hoped, desperately, as he held the unspoken promises in his hands, Wymack’s permanence and Renee’s “People can be fixed” and Dr. Dobson’s “Yes” and the way Aaron looked at Andrew when he thought he wasn’t looking, and hoped that Andrew would be caught by them, saved from drowning into the abyss.

…

Nathaniel Wesninski was dead. Had died nothing, just as he’d always thought he would. 

Neil Josten was going to die a Fox. 

He’d stared straight at hazel eyes, and let himself crumple, just slightly, as he fished for the only truth he could offer, before he fell, and dragged Andrew with him. He knew Andrew would fall, would jump right after him, but he hoped the Foxes would catch him.

“Thank you,” Neil said, letting the same soft smile he’d had the first time Andrew kissed him grace his features. “You were amazing.”

_ “If you got what you deserved, you wouldn’t be a Fox.” _

Neil Josten walked towards the cliff and jumped.

**Author's Note:**

> blatantly stole Renee's "I could ask you the same thing" line from "The Unkindness Of Ravens" by the lovely crazy_like_a, which was legitimately one of the best things my eyes have ever read ever its so A+ y'all what are you doing with your life if you haven't read it (because I have. multiple times. a 200K+ work is no match for my undying dedication to that fic it is beautiful i would marry it)
> 
> Neil grieving himself? BROKE  
> Neil having no self-preservation and worrying himself sick over his teammates(Andrew)'s grieving welfares after he dies? WOKE
> 
> also yes the title is a reference to the ICONIC "i could push you off rn" "do it. i'll drag you with me" Andreil scene because I'm SOFT


End file.
